Cam grins at him.

"And if we run out of planets for me to terraform I can make 'em from scratch. That'll take longer, though."

"...I'm intrigued," says Gregor. "How long, exactly?"

"For an Earth-sized planet? Probably months. Longer if you want it completely flora'd up instead of with just seed populations. Longer if you need anything smarter than bugs running around on it, demons can do live stuff but aren't so good with brains."

"Hmm," says Gregor. "Well, I probably have many better uses for your time than generating planets from scratch, at least if it takes that long. But I'll keep it in mind for later."

"Sure. I'm immortal, I can wait on getting around to that until after I have solved all of the other problems that there are."

"I'm not sure I'd put it behind all the other problems," says Gregor. "There are plenty of problems whose solutions are worth less than a planet."

"Yes, but terraforming an existing rock is faster. Are you short on large space rocks?"

"We might end up wanting a planet in a place where there aren't any conveniently located large space rocks. I haven't given the matter extensive thought yet."

"Fair enough. Then I will make a planet before addressing - I don't know what classic minor annoyances are operative in this world and century. I'll say something bound to be hilariously dated. Spam e-mail."

"I think that's past hilariously dated and into the realm of 'I genuinely don't know what you're talking about'," says Gregor.

Cam cackles. "I assume you still have electronic communication. It used to be very common for people to propagate excessive advertisements and incompetent scams and chain letters with it."

"I suspect excessive advertisements and incompetent scams are eternal, but apparently they've changed sufficiently in the last several hundred years to make that phrase out of date."

"Fair enough." Wag, wag.

"Hullo, coz."

"Hello, Ivan," he says brightly. "Care to come for a visit? There's someone I'd like you to meet."

"You look entirely too pleased with yourself. What gives, Miles?"

"Mysterious top-secret doings which present no danger to your life or limb and which I will explain in full when you show up."

"Because you're terribly uncreative and the only things that I might regret coming to have a look at are the ones that result in me hopping home on one leg? Well, that's me wholly reassured."

"I asked Gregor if I could borrow you and he said yes. Consider yourself officially reassigned to Whatever You Say, Miles duty for the forseeable future."

"...whatever you say, Miles. Does this mean I'm begging off work now or merely that I'm turning up for dinner?"

"Eh, turn up for dinner. It's not scale-of-hours urgent."